The San Juan de Dios Care Center in Palencia, created in 1889, served a total of 1,400 people last year in 2023 in its different community facilities, outpatient consultations, and medium and long-stay hospitalization.
The Center has concerted resources integrated into the Regional Mental Health Strategy of Castilla y León (SACyL), such as the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Center, an outpatient device that has the objective of rehabilitating recoverable psychosocial deficits and improving the user’s autonomy, and Continuing Care Unit that, on a regional basis, is intended to provide specialized health care to 50 people with serious and prolonged mental illness. Added to this is participation in the Drug Addict Care Network, dependent on the Family Department of our region, both on an outpatient basis (CAD), and through the Therapeutic Community, helping and caring for users with dual pathology.
It is essential to refocus our attention on the most vulnerable population groups, those most affected by socioeconomic precariousness and social stress. With this strategy, the Order of Saint John of God is adapting its mental health resources in Spain to the new needs and vulnerable groups, and therefore the Palencia Center is a good example, with its programs dedicated to caring for people who reach through the International Protection (PPI) and Humanitarian Care programs and who are affected by mental health problems financed by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.
ATTENTION IN CASTILLA AND LEÓN. If we focus on Castilla, in this same period of time, mental health care has been provided to 1,436 people. With 700 hospital beds and 60 places in day centers, in San Juan de Dios Castilla y León there were 196,240 hospital stays and 43,542 sessions in day centers.
Data that reinforces the key role and commitment of San Juan de Dios in the field of mental health in the region through two centers; the San Juan de Dios Assistance Center in Palencia and the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Center of the San Juan de Dios Hospital in León, with a wide range of services that includes hospitalization, residential care, day stay services, outpatient centers and therapeutic communities
ATTENTION IN SPAIN. In Spain, San Juan de Dios served 160,000 people in this area in 2023, a figure that places it as the first operator in our country in mental health. It is also a reference in the comprehensive care of people with complex problems of this type, that is, when they affect vulnerable groups such as children and adolescents, the elderly, homeless people, people with disabilities, immigrants or the incarcerated population.
Of the 80 devices in San Juan de Dios Spain, 21 are specific to mental health with total and partial hospitalization services, day hospitals, outpatient centers, community rehabilitation services and highly specialized and social care units.
The institution also has programs aimed at raising awareness, prevention and promotion of mental health such as HENKA, through which more than 7,000 young people have already passed, or SOM 360, a training platform that already has more than one million users.
THE STIGMA IN MENTAL HEALTH. In recent years, explains psychiatrist Josep Pifarré, corporate health care director of San Juan de Dios, “the increase in the number of cases and their high morbidity have turned mental health into one of the main challenges of our Health System. A problem that has gained visibility and that makes more and more patients and family members dare to talk about it and ask for help, but, let’s not fool ourselves, we are still far from normalization. , without treatment or they do not receive adequate treatment.
Furthermore, the stigma associated with this type of illness is still significant in environments such as work, where many people with mental health problems are forced to hide it both in the job interview and, subsequently, once hired.
This year, precisely, the motto of World Mental Health Day chosen by the WHO corresponds to “It is time to prioritize mental health in the workplace.” In this sense, San Juan de Dios Spain has different programs and up to six devices for labor insertion of patients with problems of this type, such as the San Juan de Dios Ciempozuelos Special Employment Center in Madrid or the CET “El Pla” in Lleida. .
CHILD AND YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH. As for younger people, Pifarré highlights that there is an increase in both the frequency of mental health problems and the severity of some of them.
“The emergence of social networks, excessive exposure to screens, cyberbullying, the absence of extensive family and support networks due to the current lifestyle urge us to work on the prevention and promotion of mental health from new approaches,” says the corporate welfare director of San Juan de Dios.
In addition, the increase in suicide attempts and self-harm, depressive and behavioral disorders, as well as eating behavior, he adds, “also urge us to work on new models of care.”
On the one hand, therefore, emphasis must be placed on the promotion and prevention of mental health problems, just as it has been done for years with cardiovascular health, something that no one questions, but that in the case of mental health is not had taken into account until now. An example would be to work on actions aimed at the responsible use of technology among young people, something that in San Juan de Dios we have been doing for some time.